Mapping the Sororal Bond in Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm

This essay seeks to examine the sororal bond in cousinship in Olive Schreiner’s The Story of an African Farm (1883), a relationship that has rarely received critical attention in Schreiner scholarship. By laying out what Lawrence Grossberg calls the “mattering maps” of the cousins Lyndall and Em, this essay investigates the ways in which the discrepancies of their social positions and economic conditions constitute and also determine what matters in their experiences of sisterly and heterosexual love. It is owing to their different mattering maps, the essay contends, that we see an affective context where the cousins’ affective transaction lacks mutual recognition of affectionate feelings, and that Lyndall’s immaturity leads to her exploitation of heterosexual love at the expense of sisterly love. In examining how the cousins interact to affect and be affected by each other, the essay seeks to demonstrate the incommensurable affective exchange between them, which eventually disintegrates the sororal bond of their cousinship. Seen in this light, the essay maintains, Lyndall’s acknowledged role as the forerunner of the New Woman in Schreiner, even the New Woman, scholarship is overshadowed not just by the incongruity between her words and deeds but also by her affective mattering in the bonding of cousinship.

關鍵字

Olive Schreiner ； The Story of an African Farm ； sororal bond ； mattering map ； affective context

並列摘要

本文試圖探討奧莉芙．謝瑞納(Olive Schreiner)小說《非洲農場的故事》(The Story of an African Farm)裏表姊妹之間的女性情誼。這個議題在研究謝瑞納的相關文獻中鮮少受到關注。本文藉由勞倫斯．格羅斯柏格 (Lawrence Grossberg)所提出的「關切地圖」(mattering map)，探究社經地位的差異如何型塑兩位表姊妹玲朵(Lyndall)與艾梅(Em)對於異性戀與姊妹情誼之間的情感抉擇。本文指出，由於彼此關切點的不同，她們缺乏彼此認可的情感傳遞。而玲朵的不成熟行逕也誘使她經由犧牲姊妹情誼以成就其異性戀情、並藉以達成個人目的。在新女性與謝納瑞相關的文獻中，往往視玲朵為新女性先驅。本文闡明兩位表姊妹在互動中，不相稱的情感交流如何裂解她們的表姊妹情愫：玲朵的言行不一以及與艾梅之間相異的情誼關切點，讓她新女性先驅的形象蒙上一層陰影。